My Real Life Blog--because the blog-o-sphere is real life!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Week 21 good to WOW Edit Looking Up

Thursday again! I do not know how the week goes so fast! After last weeks easy edits, I had forgotten that the problem with more than one image is how much time it can take AND how long the post can get when you do more than one edit per picture. Good thing we learned that whole mouse over thing last week. Now I need a mouse over that rotates through three or 4 pictures. Well, let's make this short and get to the pictures.

Kite:

I removed the doll, cropped to the rule of thirds a little more, and brightened with several methods. Feel free to mouse over to see the original.

And then because I thought this might be a good shot for vignette:

I used CoffeShops Vignette action for this one. It would be fun to have more control over size, shape, and color.

The boys:

I did some dodging to take their faces out of the shadows and tried many things to deepen the color. Finally I did a gradient map of blue to brown and masked off of the boys faces and hands. I also took the tree out behind Huckleberry (I went a little clone happy today) and cropped. I wanted the boys to be more visible after Sunflower looked at the picture and said "too far away!" but I also wanted to keep the vastness of the sky so I didn't crop as close as I would for a family photo.

Okay, here is my least favorite edit. When I started to crop, I realized I actually just don't like the composition of this photo. However, it is flowers, so perfect opportunity for creative edits and a good photo to experiment with vignettes.

I only have PSE so I don't think I can do a curves level vignette. However, I played around with the other tutorial. It is basically the way the CoffeeShop action appears to make vignettes, except I have more control. I chose to use an oval because that seemed like it would work better with this photo. DO NOT forget the feathering--unless you want to make a frame--it makes pretty stark edges. Then I ran PW Hearthside at lower opacity just for fun.

Huckleberry:

Closer crop, some dodging on his face, some perfect portrait stuff, and a mini-fusion.

Last, but not least, my sunflare:

I was pretty content with my sunflare SOOC. Then I ran mini-fusion and I loved how it made the blues so deep. However, that isn't the color the sky really was, but neither was the SOOC. I'm torn. Is photography about capturing what is there or creating art? For some I know it is about art, but I don't think of myself as an artist. However, this time...I decided to go with art...

So I added some texture and some text. Kim Klassen's Stained Linen--a wonderful texture.

Wow! Those are some beautiful edits! My favorite would have to be the sky picture with the scripture. Lovely! The blue is so rich! I'm starting my own challenge on Saturday, and would love to see you there!

What is this blog?

I am strictly an amateur photographer with 3 kids and a brand new D-SLR. I am finding that the best way for me to improve my photography is to participate in photo and photo editing challenges. But I don't want to saturate my real life blog with my photo attempts, so I started this blog for a place to post photos (blogger makes it sooo easy!). If you are interested in learning more about me and my adorable children, feel free to visit my real life blog.